


Come Alive

by CelticRune



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Gen, Suspense, weeklywayhaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 06:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17299184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelticRune/pseuds/CelticRune
Summary: Some speculation about what the book 2 baddie could be, written for this week's prompt on the discord server: Creeping Carnival.A carnival has come to town, and you need to figure out how it's hunting your townspeople. Investigating it on your own did seem like a better idea in the daylight.





	Come Alive

Maybe you’ve read too many horror novels. Maybe carnivals are just inherently creepy, and you never notice because of the bright, flashy distractions that lurk around every corner.

The lights are off, now, and the only things lurking are shadows. You hope. Your plan to come investigate the carnival after the crowds are gone was well and good in theory, but you didn’t account for how the deserted tents and attractions would make your heart race and your palms sweat around the textured grip of your heavy flashlight. Your hard-fought warrant sits heavy in your pocket, only there now to draw your attention to its uselessness. While you hadn’t expected the carnival to be busy with only its workers present, you weren’t expecting it to be entirely deserted and it’s grating on your already unsteady nerves.

Your breathing feels far too loud in the silence, your unsteady steps too heavy. Every time you swing the beam of your flashlight from side to side you could swear you see something moving in the swathe of shadow it leaves behind.

Alright, so, maybe you _shouldn’t_ have come on your own. Maybe, just maybe, Ava’s stubborn underestimation of your skills wasn’t entirely wrong. It sure would be nice to have a team of superpowered vampires to get between you and whatever’s skulking ( _nothing_ , there’s nothing, it’s just your mind playing tricks on you, you’re _fine_ ) out in the dark.

But they are not here. You are, and you press on. The big tent looms oppressively in the darkness right in front of you. It’s the reason you’re here and, as far as you can tell, the epicentre for all that’s happening. Every victim you’ve been able to talk to attended the show here, yet none were able to tell you what went on inside. A haunting song, a voice, the deep oppressive dark, a blinding white void, a stampede of circus animals, a hunt, and so on. All fragmented accounts, all different, and all completely unlike the far more reasonable accounts you’ve heard from the visitors who haven’t yet fallen sick.

You don’t yet know how the infection is choosing its victims, if it is choosing at all, but you didn’t want to risk finding out in person so here you are, a torch in your clammy hands and the obnoxiously striped tent flap right before you. There’s no lock, of course, there’s no way to lock a tent, anything can get in (and out, you can’t get locked in here, you’ll be fine).

You can get in. You take a deep, bracing breath, tighten your grip on your flashlight, and push the heavy canvas aside.

The darkness is oppressive. While the waning moon outside shone some light, there are no stars here. Only your flashlight and a light that dances to your left, flickering like an open flame.

You freeze, your breath caught in your throat and your heart beating in your ears.

You blink.

The darkness is darkness once more. You look around frantically, your knees trembling as you take a half step back, but the only light here is the unsteady beam of your flashlight illuminating a long stretch of flooring in front of you. No flickering flame, no other people, just quiet darkness. You’re fine, you’re _fine_.

_For Wayhaven_ , you tell yourself before you swing your flashlight towards your left. Bright, stable, electric light shines back at you, partly obscured by another flap of heavy canvas. You breathe. You walk closer. As you get closer and push aside the canvas you can see that your flashlight had merely reflected off an antique-looking vanity. It’s accompanied by other, seemingly randomly assorted items all pushed and stacked together into the small storage corner. Some you recognise easily as props for a magic show, from the bucket of swords to the top hat and cartoonish wand, while others are more esoteric. The vanity, for one, as the thick layer of dust makes it look like it hasn’t been used in… years?

You run a finger over the lacquered wood. It comes away stained with dust and leaves a visible groove in the thick layer of dust. Far too much to have accumulated in the scant few weeks the carnival has been here, and a closer examination quickly shows you that the layer of dust is uniform. This vanity hasn’t been moved in a long time.

The oppressive silence makes it hard to think. How did it get here? Magic? With all you’ve seen since meeting Unit Bravo you don’t have much room for scepticism left, but you don’t know of anything that could cause this, whatever _this_ even is.

You should leave. You should go back, report your findings, endure the scolding that’s undoubtedly going to follow because you went off on your own, and come back with people who actually know more about the supernatural than a _Dummies’ Guide to Vampires_. But what do you have, really? Some dust? A creepy atmosphere? You need more than that, you need _proof_. A solid lead at the least, and this isn’t even that.

You leave the storage area behind you. The open construction of the curved bleachers to your left lets you see right through to the central ring. It looks empty, but the lattice of seats obstructs your view and while you’re here you don’t want to leave any stone unturned.

The soft sand of the ring dampens your footsteps better than the wooden flooring and you hold back a sigh of relief. Now that it isn’t broken by your footsteps the silence stifles you like a heavy blanket, so you focus on what you can see: The cleanly swept sand that carpets the ring, the centre tentpole, and no bleachers anywhere around you.

No.

No, no no _no no no_ -

You shine your flashlight back and forth frantically, but nothing reveals itself from the shadows. You stumble back against the tentpole and the solid realness of the wood is reassuring but around you there’s nothing but sand, far more than there used to be, clean and featureless and _where are your footsteps_.

You sink down onto trembling knees.  No dust kicks up. You dig grooves into the sand with trembling fingers and you feel it give, you feel it move, but the sand leaves no trace of your passing. Your hands are perfectly clean when you fumble in your pocket for your phone. It turns on just fine, familiar electric glow and all, and your breath rushes out of you in a sigh of relief. You have all of the team on quick dial and you hit the first number you see, _anyone_ will do when all you want is to make sure they’re still there and maybe to sob in panic and fear.

The dial tone rings of comfort and a tenuous connection to _home_ , not wherever this is, and your panicked breathing starts to slow as you listen to it.

Until it keeps going, and no one picks up. Did you accidentally call Nat? You want to check but you don’t want to take the phone away from your ear long enough to risk missing it when someone does pick up, and the indecision leaves you frozen.

The phone rings on, until it doesn’t. You take a breath, words bubbling in your throat, but they die on your tongue.

“Welcome-” says a voice you don’t know. A bombastic voice, an announcer’s voice, a voice so unlike anyone in Unit Bravo. Lights flash on brightly enough to be blinding and you raise a hand to protect your eyes. They’re too bright for you to see their source but you can see figures around you, moving but indistinct, and someone right in front of you. There’s a light at their back that leaves you unable to make out anything but their outline (human, at least, that’s a relief), their top hat and the cane held in their spread hands. They’re not holding a phone to their ears, but you still hear their voice through yours. “-to the carnival!”

 


End file.
